Western Christianity Research Paper

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History 120 Fall 2013 Supplemental Reading Western Christianity and English Law. Information is taken from A History of Women in America. Coryell, Janet; Faires, Nora *Students are responsible for the information contained in the supplemental handouts and brief notes that are posted on Black Board. Students are expected to utilize information within course assignments and exam answers. Western Christianity. Religious understandings about the proper role of women greatly affected the laws that were transported to the colonies, and the degree to which those laws were modified by the circumstances in which colonists found themselves. Many writers and preachers who explained Catholic and Protestant theology, including Anglicanism…show more content…
In England, men of property controlled government. Property ownership was the key to achieving political power, since people who owned property were believed to have a vested interest in ruling a society properly; that is, they would rule for the benefit of those with and without property. In addition, voting rights were limited by one’s religion (voters were Protestant and members of the state church) and one’s legal status (freemen could vote; servants and slaves could not). Only a very few men in England could vote or hold…show more content…
"Their religion taught that family roles were part of a continuous chain of hierarchical and delegated authority descending from God" (ibid 8). "Colonial America was very much a patriarchal society, and marriage was a contract between un-equals. The husband’s obligation was the provision of support; the wife’s, obedient service" (Queen et al 197). There was a norm of "subordination and equivalence"--subordination of the wife in the social hierarchy, but both sexes were believed to have equal standing before God (Browning 75). Browning adds that the Puritans took Eph 5:21-23 "at face value." A journal entry of John Winthrop in 1645 gives evidence of the prevailing attitude: writing about the wife of the governor of Connecticut, a woman who had suffered some mental infirmity after spending much time reading and writing books, Winthrop wrote, "For if she had attended her household affairs, and such things as belong to women, and not gone out of her way and calling to meddle in such things as are proper for men, whose minds are stronger, etc., she had kept her wits, and might have improved them usefully and honorably in the place God had set her. . . ." (Queen et al
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